from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
Natural organic matter is a complex pool of organic substances which can affect the transport of both beneficial and harmful species in soil systems. The occurrence of pharmaceuticals as soil pollutants has become one of the new environmental threats. The mobility of drug contaminants in soils and their availability for plants is largely controlled by their sorption. Soils have a "self-cleaning" ability which depends on the content of organic matter. Interactions between drugs and soil organic mattes can lead to the partial immobilization of these pollutants and suppression of their mobility in soil resulting in the pollution of drinking water resources, crop and consequently food contamination. In this contribution, the soils with different contents of organic matter were selected to assess their sorption abilities to widely used pharmaceutical diclofenac (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug that is frequently prescribed to reduce inflammation and pain). Stability of formed complexes and drug leachability in water were also studied to determine the immobilization degree of pharmaceutical in studied soils. The effect of organic matter on binding ability of soils as well as the leachability of diclofenac at different pH values are compared and discussed.
Keywords: Organic matter, diclofenac, adsorption, immobilization© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.